Dispatches from Mescalia

What else to do in these uncertain days of turmoil and unrest than to retreat into sweet sweet NOSTALGIA. The following tales are plucked from a six week trip spent aimlessly wandering the mountains and beaches of Old Mexico. Felis and I can not guarantee the validity of any these recollections, as many of them were made under the influence of strong spirits, sold to us by a woman and her parrot at the beginning of our journey. 

Ave de Mexico

Oaxaca Highlands

Up in the mountains, perched someplace between yucca drylands below epiphyte-laded cloud forests above. At the center of a small town, a 17th century cathedral rests like a dormant spacecraft that landed centuries ago. A village built around this artifact from Andromeda. A teenager shoots from the foul line of a basketball court built adjacent to the courtyard. A woman next door puts laundry out to dry in the morning sun. We sleepily make our way from the cabina towards food and day ahead.

Astronave

Magdalena welcomes us each morning with a slow, measured, monotonous BUENAS DIAS CHICOS. Her booming voice at once jarring and nurturing. We mumble our reply, shuffle to a table and play out the rest of the script. CAFE? Si, gracias. CHOCOLATE CON AGUA? Si, gracias. We mostly eat in silence, occasionally making halting, probably incomprehensible small talk with Magdalena. Our attention drifts out the window to a kestrel perched upon the crucifix that crowns the church belltower. The red paint of the cross does nothing to diminish the idea of this taloned sentinel spilling the blood of rodents brought back as offerings to god. But what god? Whose gods? 

Sangre de los ratones

As per protocol, Magdalena brings us two sandwiches which will be our sustenance during the daily exploration. Like two schoolboys off to the classroom, equipped with our brownbags, Magdalena, our madre whilst here, our madre still in some ways, booms after us BUEN VIAJE CHICOS as we depart for another day. Back out in the courtyard, a descending series of cries emanate from within the cathedral. Over and over, these plaintive calls repeat. Magdalena’s voice, elemental and grounding, mixes with the mind-splitting spiral singing of the canyon wren in the bell tower. It's vertiginous song, echoed and trapped within the tower, transports us back to the 17th century. To the building of the church-the blood and sweat of slave labor mixed with the mortar that holds these walls. Back further still, to when the rocks were stacked along the trails we've been walking these past days—rocks covered with millennial lichens, the craggy oaks above laden with epiphytes whose folds and fissures are ceaselessly interrogated by warblers and vireos. The imprisoned song gets compressed further and the mountains are leveled. We come to, back to the present. We look around, shaking off the shackles of time the wren has saddled us with. Now equipped with the knowledge that the current flora and fauna that surrounds us is only the latest incarnation in a series of living skins this range has adorned, we step into the future.  

Piel de las montañas 

BUEN VIAJE...CHICOS.

And Magdalena. Somehow she has always been here.

Puerto Escondido

Two gringos walking the busy coastal highway, too cheap to rent a taxi, too dumb to understand the bus service in the area. No matter, the ditch birding is incredible and when coupled with the life-threatening danger of oncoming traffic, the experience is transcendent. The obscene conglomerate of feathers and pluck that is the white-throated magpie jay causes Felis to yell IS THAT A BIRD. Moments later, after a near decapitation from a passing trucks' side mirror, a foraging streak-backed oriole is found. THAT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BIRD I'VE EVER SEEN I scream into the roar of traffic, my reasoning perhaps influenced by the recent near-death encounter. That said, it is certainly a bird to die for.

Juan 

Awkwardly (everything we do in this country is awkward), we rent two kayaks and set out upon an estuary? Bay? River mouth? What is this big bodied brackish mirror we're floating on? We see a mangrove hawk we think, looks like a black hawk. Range/habitat seems right. Who knows. Who cares. Heat stroke squashes any sort of shit giving re: lumping/splitting/ID in general. A dragon descends and skims the surface, a frigatebird drinking. We nearly capsize. A bush in the middle of nowhere keeps producing boat-billed herons as we draw nearer. Like Mary Poppins' bottomless purse, the scene is positively impossible. They just keep coming, 5, 10, 20, clapping their massive bills at us, the racket shattering the serenity of this mysterious pond. The herons shit as they fly past us, their turds milking the still waters, the only clouds we see that day. 

Michoacán

Cold and pre-dawn, we bounce up a steep mountain road in the back of a camioneta. Two tall gringos, we don’t fit. Blood-pumping warmth begins to return as we climb stairs into high forests of abeto, pino, encino, oyamele at first light. We see a few monarch butterflies, but expected many more. Cold and tired, convinced we’ve been led into another gringo tourist trap, we glance at one another in dismay. We are impatient. We are American.

Then we look harder into the slowly-brightening understory, and we see. They hang from the trees like dead dusty leaves. Strings of mussels. The branches are laden. The branches are strained to breaking. The sun has risen high enough to bring some warmth. Some fluttering movement begins. Dozens of monarchs begin descending out of the trees, floating down towards food. For a moment, we think it’s a lot, we are impressed. We are winners.

But as the sun’s warmth grows ever stronger. They keep coming. They land on every surface. What was dozens is now thousands. Tens of thousands. Millions. Uncountable, all-encompassing. The sky is thick with gliding orange and black kites. The air is audibly moving from the push of their collective million wingbeats. A river of wind courses between the treetops. They land in mud and water to drink, wings twitching, like they are straining to take off and carry the earth back up into the sky with them. They mate, rolling circles in the air, the male carrying the female in coitus. They mate on the ground, rolling in the mud over the wings of their dead, recently dispatched by the red warblers that take only the heads and thorax. 

Flores para la vacia


Los arboles que estan hechos de mariposas

Suddenly and without notice, the day has passed and darkness nears. Eight hours dissolved into an infinitum of wingbeats. We descend from Monarch Mountain exhausted, emptied out. Gravity pulls us to our beds somewhere in the town below, miles away, hours away. The song of the brown-backed solitaire, atmospheric ice glitching and tumbling, drags up deeper into the valley. The ice bits rise and merge with the first burning stars above. 

The next morning, awake in a mountain town, a boozeless hangover, we lurk forth in search of cafe, pan and whatever else along the way. Miraculously the solitaire's song, still ringing in our heads from the night before, is heard from the middle of town. It is close. We follow the winding street to the headwaters of this ethereal ringing and find it. Caged and tailless, he is rendered comic and tragic without his beautiful rudder. The song fills the town and spills into the alley gardens, passes through the panaderia, the trashed choked streams and up into the groves of sleeping monarchs above.

Los ornitologos

If you haven't had enough of these frivolous tales of bumbling self-indulgence then continue on to our Palenque fiasco which was featured in an earlier episode of BB&B.  Vaya con pajaros - Cassowary

Costa Rica Part IV: Sarapiqui River Cruise

Back to Costa Rica. I am going to attempt to execute this post with concision and precision.

One afternoon I scheduled us for a boat trip on the Sarapiqui River. I didn't expect to see a ton, but afternoon birding is hard anyways, so why not just hang out on a boat for a while? It's pretty much like geri birding, you just sit there and look at the things that are presented in front of you. Plus, there was a realistic-albeit-not-high chance we could see Sunbittern. We could have booked a boat through Hotel Gavilan, but I ended up going with Oasis Nature Tours and booked our boat through their Facebook page. A very low and mostly unobscured two-toed sloth passed out next to the parking lot was a good sign when we arrived at the main boat dock at Puerto Viejo.

Our guide (Carmela) and driver were on time and our party of four had the whole boat. Carmela wasn't a great birder (I wasn't expecting one) but she was a good guide and really came through for us later in the trip. She also introduced us to something we had not previously noticed, the Tico/Tica habit of attaching an affirming short question ("yes?") or affirmative sound to the end of sentences spoken in English that aren't meant to be questions. For example, instead of saying "Here in Costa Rica, it is the dry season", one would say "Here in Costa Rica, it is the dry season, mmhmm!", where the second syllable of "mmhmm" is much higher than the first and both syllables are spoken rapidly, so it sounds really enthusiastic. It's rather similar in emphasis to the "su-wheet!" call of a Pacific-slope Flycatcher. We all thought it was a brilliant mannerism.

So much for being concise...

There were tons of Mangrove Swallows, many of which would feed right next to the boat or remain perched while we passed very close by (see above). Another common but more familiar bird worth mentioning (not pictured) was Spotted Sandpiper...I don't know if I've seen so many in one place in my life.

A mixed flock along the shore contained this Bay-breasted Warbler. It was cool to see them outside of spring and fall migration for the first time, even though they all looked like fall migrants.

I rarely see Anhingas up close so was happy to crush on this bird a bit. In the first two pics you can see it getting at the oil gland at the base of its tail. Mmmm, sweet precious Anhinga oil...

Cattle Egrets are common in the area, and a couple flocks were taking their afternoon egret tea down in the river.

We saw quite a bit of non-avian wildlife. I think these are Rhinoclemmys funerea, black river turtles aka black wood turtles. Life turtle! We also saw a guy on the riverbank mocking us for birdwatching. In response, I also mocked us for birdwatching, which guide and driver appreciated. Their English was good enough to know what "NERDS!" means.

This green iguana was a particularly fine specimen.

Of the three monkey species we saw on the trip (howler, spider, white-faced capuchin) I think I like howlers the most. They make the coolest sounds by far and have the best scrotums, as you can see here.

The nerds enjoyed themselves. Boat times are good times.

We also saw our first spectacled caiman of the trip. This one has a massive insect next to its eye, presumably trying to get tasty caiman tears.

Yeah, it happened. About halfway through the trip, Carmela let us know that we had an excellent chance at seeing a Sunbittern. She was right and the bird obliged. This was a life bird for all of us and I was beside myself. The bird gods were with us.

We got great, prolonged looks. This is one of those birds that you see for the first time and think to yourself, "I can't believe I'm actually looking at this". Sunbittern is an iconic species and there are not enough superlatives out there to do it justice.

And yes, we got excellent looks at everything it had to offer. I could not have been happier.

It was a winning afternoon on the river topped off by an unforgettable bird. Stoked!

5MR Birding in Exponential Times

I have seen countless Anna's Hummingbirds in my life and I will admit I no longer look at each one with child-like wonder, or even its rare and highly diluted cousin, regular adult wonder. For example, the male Anna's in my backyard is highly territorial and essentially keeps all other hummingbirds out of there, no matter how many feeders I put up and juicy nectar-giving plants I put in the ground. Just today he chased out an interesting Selasphorus. It's in his nature of course, but still...what a dick! That said whenever the light catches a male the right way or one is doing its display flight nearby, it is still impossible to look away. Photographed at the Los Capitancillos Ponds.

Any birdpunx remember Cobra Skulls? I really dug that band. Imma kick off this post with a verse of theirs.

The golden age is never coming back

Getting out was not part of the plan

You are just a victim of an older time

Falling behind in exponential times

Grim eh? But very fitting. The notion that large numbers of us could be wiped out by an illness that also brings society to a grinding halt seemed outlandish and atavistic to many a mere couple months ago. The phrase "exponential growth" meant almost nothing to anybody except nerds. The phrase was safely in the weak grasp of dweebs. Now that idea has been bouncing around all over the place this spring, though clearly it has not made it's way into the brains of all ("It didn't go in. It just impacted on the surface."). These are exponential, weird times we live in. Things seemed weird...and not in a good way...before this fateful March, but of course our day to day life has been totally upended since then. The Groundhog Day effect, already familiar to so many, has intensified to peak Bill Murray levels. It's not just that each day is so similar to the last, or that days blur together, the other less obvious but still significant component of that headspace is that we don't know when any of this sad, stressful bizarreness will end. The light at the end of the tunnel is dim and ill-defined...and possibly because the light is being made by a fiery inferno, and we are all barreling toward it.

But chances are if you are reading this, no matter where you all, you know all too well of what I speak. It's my job as the #7 U.S. birder as identified by the infallible Global Birder Ranking System (universally recognized as an Essential Business) and one of birding's most prominent influencers to carry on and talk about birding in spite of the conditions in which we find ourselves.

Red-winged "Bicolored" Blackbirds arrive to breed at my house very early in winter and appear to set up territories before any other migrant songbird within my radius. Though you can find them without trouble year round in the county, these particular birds will likely all leave the area before the end of June. I have not grown numb to their presence and am happy to always have them in earshot and at my feeders while GERI BIRDING. This male was making some modest but pleasing display flights. Photographed at the Los Capitancillos Ponds.

The first thing that needs to be said is that birders, like people in general, are having all sorts of reactions to covid-19 and the shelter-in-place orders. I will be the first one to step up and admit that I did not see this pandemic coming and that we would be the world leader in number of cases and death toll (MAGA! USA!), but I am going to tell you that once it got rolling here I knew exactly how this would affect birders. It is all happening as I have foreseen. To w(h)it:

*A lot of birders would have sweet birding trips cancelled.

*Yard birding would take off.

*5MR birding would grow yet more in popularity.

*Some birders would stop birding away from their yard.

*Some birders would only bird locally.

*Some birders would still travel to bird (mostly to chase essential rarities, obvi) but not as much as they normally would.

*Some birders would bird the exact same way they did in February, as if nothing at all had changed. Lots of county listers/chasers with this attitude. 

I have seen countless White-crowned Sparrows in my life but their arrival and departure from California lowlands have always been very significant to me. Now, as a GERI BIRDER, I am particularly saddened when they and their Golden-crowned brethren pull out and head north. My yard will gain no new common birds in the meantime, as my very small suite of summer birds have already arrived. My last White-crown departed on April 24, and it seems my last Golden-crowned left on April 26, but luckily they will be back in less than five months. This is a pugetensis with the dull yellow bill and noticeable brown wash on the breast and underparts. Photographed at Rancho de Bastardos.

And here is a crisp gambelii for comparison, which was foraging a few feet away from the pugetensis above.

*All tour guides would be totally screwed.

*There would be a great deal of shelter-shaming (shaming people in public for chasing distant rarities or just doing any birding at all) in listservs and Facebook groups.

*The number of reported rarities will fall off as a result of birders travelling less and popular sites having reduced or no access, but may be compensated in part by birders by birding locations that previously enjoyed less coverage. The birding herd mentality so prevalent in many regions will be tamped down somewhat.

*Since almost everyone is even more stressed during this time, there will be some highly entertaining pitched battles between birders in public forums on all manner of topics.

Ok, the one thing I did not predict was people hoping eBird would remove alerts and start hiding data to discourage birders from...birding. This seems not only unrealistic, but also really bizarre. Oh I also know that a very well known birder...also, unfortunately, an eBird reviewer...thinks that law enforcement agencies are planning to use eBird data to cite violators of shelter in place measures?

How embarrassing, to put it mildly.

For the number of Merlins I've seen, its notable that these slick birds seem to so rarely remain on perches close enough to say that you got great looks at them. This one, presumably the last one I'll see until fall, was brave enough to buck the trend. Photographed at the Santa Clara Valley Water District HQ.

As for me? I have not left the county since sheltering started (and here, we have the Santa Clara County measures on top of the California ones) and mostly, but not entirely, remain in my 5MR when birding. Santa Clara County's shelter order directs us to remain within the county unless performing an essential activity, so by that measure I guess I have been COMPLIANT...and perhaps you think I am a coward for doing so. That's ok, because I'm sure some of you other readers probably think I am a plague vendor doling out pestilence and death each and every time I go birding away from my yard. Where does The Truth lie? Who is in possession of The Answer?

Many have found The Answer...to everything...lies somewhere within their own FIVE MILE RADIUS. Interestingly, the San Mateo County (which is the county north of here) shelter in place order restricts residents to...you guessed it, a 5MR from their homes! Sad to be sure, but from a purely birding standpoint, convenient and hilarious. Upon learning this, one unenlightened local birder posted to the local listserv about how depressing birding will be if he was going to be confined to locations within five miles of his house. I can only imagine his surprise (and disgust) when he learned of the legions of birders who volunteer to do this very thing!

Some of the plantings at the Santa Clara Valley Water District have turned out to great for migrant hummingbirds, most of which are comprised of zesty Rufous Hummingbirds. I've ended up seeing a lot more Rufous Hummingbirds since moving here from Alameda County and their comparative abundance has been refreshing. And no, I'm not 100% sure that female is not an Allen's, but Allen's are greatly outnumbered in my 5MR by Rufous for some reason.

One of my post-Costa Rica birding highlights this year was finding this Calliope Hummingbird, also at the water district. Unlike many of my experiences with this species, it was very close and gave excellent looks. They are annual in the county but are typically only reported from one or two locations per year. This wee little crippler is easily one of my favorite western migrants. Fortunately, it's been a very good spring for finding them in lowlands in the state, and I'm sure a large number of them have passed through the saddle at Loma Prieta undetected.

Here is my first new radius bird of 2020 - a much-anticipated Purple Martin. Though not quite a rarity, this is another very hard bird to find in the county away from Loma Prieta, where they breed. Photographed at the Chynoweth Pond in San Jose.

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but if there was ever a time to be redundant on the topic of radius birding, it is now. I know most of you reading this fall into the following categories: (1) you are Flycatcher Jen (who started radius birding), (2) you are already a 5MR birder, (3) you are sympathetic to 5MR birding but haven't embarked on your radial journey, (4) you think 5MR birding is dumb and entirely unappealing, or (5) you live someplace where it doesn't work so well (those exist - you get a free pass). If 3 or 4 resonate with you...now is the time to step out of the darkness and into the radial light. Do you have someplace to be? No. Something better to do? Definitely not. Come join us! I'm not at all saying we should give ourselves the self-imposed San Mateo treatment, but really there could be no better time to be doing a lot of birding close to home. 

I should mention that all birds in today's post were seen in my 5MR, including Rancho de Bastardos, a Geri Birding haven for me in these difficult times. I've recorded 95 species here since sheltering began here in mid-March, including a banner day where I managed a whopping (to me) 61 species, almost entirely after 12PM. I believe that's my highest single day species total here so far. Geri to the rescue!

Similar to the situation with Red-winged Blackbirds, Band-tailed Pigeons can be found in the county throughout the year but they disappear from my yard in fall and winter. I wonder how far "our" birds migrate, after all they are found from Alaska to Argentina (!) and have a nice pattern of vagrancy in the eastern half of the continent, so some birds are certainly moving significant distances. At any rare, it's good to have these humongous floppy goofs back and available for Geri Birding duties. Photographed at Rancho de Bastardos.

I'm happy to have Hooded Oriole as a common visitor to the yard, I'm pretty sure they nest on both sides of my house along my street. For whatever reason adult males are way more skittish than females and juveniles, so I'll take a powerline shot. This is far and away the flashiest bird that visits the yard on the reg, what would I do without them? Photographed at Rancho de Bastardos.

I think we are pretty much caught up on things now. Oh, I need to mention that I got one more new radius bird recently, which was also a new addition to the yard list (first since last year) - I stepped out into my backyard briefly the other night and almost keeled over when I heard a strident PILL-WILL-WILLET! proclaimed not once, but twice, with strength and vigor. Shorebirds are so hard to come by in my radius that I was totally taken aback by this northbound Willet giving nocturnal flight calls. Migration is a hell of a thing.

Costa Rica Part III: Catarata Del Toro and Braulio Carrillo National Park

Ok! Well, like usual, I'm doing an awful job at blogging this bird trip...but we all knew that's what would happen. You would think that being sequestered at home all the time now that I would be churning out posts at a rapid clip, but no! It turns having a pandemic unfold around me, while being trapped with a toddler who badly wants breaks from her parents and has practically ceased napping (which, for you nonbreeders out there, is a very bad thing) is not at all conducive to bird blogging. What have I been doing in my free moments while not parenting super hard, or, alternatively, in a catatonic state of despair? Well, among some of the more typical nonbirder things (catching up on stuff like Picard and Tiger King) I've been birding the shit out of my yard, which has been a good respite from world collapse. More on that another time.

To pick up back where we left off in the last post, in the afternoon we took a trip to Catarata Del Toro to see...well, what there was to see. I used the maps.me app to navigate for the entire trip, and while it was usually solid, it took us a very weird way up to the waterfall from Hotel Gavilan. Fortunately, this route took us to our only Red-breasted Meadowlarks of the trip and allowed for a Groove-billed Ani crush.

This private reserve offers some GERI BIRDING, and also a very large garden loaded with porterweed that you have to walk a ways to get to (porterweed is manna for a multitude of hummingbird species). The feeders here had Green-crowned Brilliants, a geri standard. This one, with the extensive white on the throat and underparts, is a female.

Facemelting Violet Sabrewings were present in good numbers.

Green Hermit is the other enormous hummingbird you can expect to find frequenting feeders at certain places.

The main target bird here was Sooty-faced Finch, a Costa Rica-Panama endemic. They are not reliable at many places in Costa Rica, but they are a known commodity here. I was STOKED to find one on a path after a relatively short time looking, and then confused to watch it fly up to a cluster of nanners/platanos and just go to town on fruit. The bird wasn't exactly confiding but we got some nice long looks at the sooty-faced fiend all the same. Another target bird people come here for is Black-bellied Hummingbird, which we saw as well, though we got better looks previously at the one at La Cinchona.

Bananaquit is another common geri bird, or Geri Bird if you prefer.

An Olive-striped Flycatcher dropped down for some nice eye-level looks for a moment. What can I tell you about Olive-striped Flycatchers? Pretty much nothing, though their name is helpfully descriptive at least.

We did not do the main waterfall trail, as it is steep and loud and presumably the most peopled, but there are some really good views of it elsewhere. It's a really good waterfall, highly recommended, it's not why we were there but it did not disappoint. The birding here was not fantastic for us but I'm sure it could have been if we were there in the morning instead of the afternoon, or if the weather hadn't been so dreary.

The next morning it was off to the Braulio Carrillo National Park area. The El Tapir garden, famous for its Snowcaps (but less so for potentially good birding trails also present), has had only intermittent access since last year and now has a huge metal gate in front of it and highway construction going on directly in front of that while we were there, so no joy on getting in that day and it was yet another Snowcapless trip to Costa Rica. Ouch though. Next time...I will not fail, and go look for them at Rancho Naturalista where they are notoriously easy.

But no worries, we went just another minute down the highway to the Braulio Carrillo trails. The Quebrada Gonzales ranger station was still closed but we had no problem getting onto the El Ceibo Trail, (on the west side of the highway) before paying our entrance fees and doing the other loop by the ranger station.

We had some flocks but none of the insane megaflocks or crazy tanager diversity that we experienced in 2012. As is common here, there were some slow stretches and a number of intriguing but extremely uncooperative birds. There were multiple Buff-throated Foliage-Gleaners though, even a couple cooperative ones like this one.

These swifts blew by at one point and I fired off a clip of docu-crushes...they were gone in just a few seconds and I pretty much forgot about these photos until recently. Now I know they were either White-chinned or Spot-fronted (hat tip to Pat for ID consultation)...both of which would be LIFE BIRDS. My money is heavily on White-chinned but I will let them remain a "slash"...life is truly pain. We did really poorly with swift viewing on this trip in general because we are bad at stuff apparently.

The coolest thing we found (Jen found), if you ask me, was this thing labelled an "oriole snake" on Jen's hilarious (but surprisingly useful) laminated Costa Rica wildlife foldout pamphlet thing that she always had on her. It was long as fuck! We were trying to get a look at some distant, aggravating antwren thing and Jen noticed this snake dripping down a tree trunk in the foreground.

Very good snake. Much length. Quite friendly. Photos don't do it justice. 

You can count on cheerful Buff-rumped Warblers to provide company on trails at many places in Costa Rica. If you are creeping along a trail hoping and praying to see an antpitta or tinamou or quail dove on the trail ahead of you, you will instead see tons of these.

Spider monkey was a lifer mammal. I have no idea how that is possible, because we saw them seemingly everywhere and didn't see a single one on the previous trip. They are good at climbing and stuff. They really do use their tails like another appendage, pretty cool to see in action.

I am not as enamored with monkeys as some people but their facial expressions are undeniably humanish and regularly hilarious.

It was so good to be in the warm embrace of manakins again. This is a male White-ruffed, looking snazzy.

I think that's it for this post. I did get Slaty Antwren and Plain Antvireos as lifers, though with disappointing looks at each. The birding was not as raging as it could be and being locked out of potential Snowcap was a kick in the nuts, but you can't win 'em every time can you? Fortunately we would get a huge birding win later that day, I'll get to that next time.